[3.25] Ivory Tower attribute stacking LL Ice Spear CoC Inquisitor

What would be your next change now? And thank you again for the build and in-depth explanations:)

https://poe.ninja/pob/zKd

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Xeverous wrote:

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Smallwalrus wrote:

Do we need to get some sort of projectile's pierce mod?

Have you read respective post parts? Only for the default Ice Spear.

Hey, yes I did - but I didnt see any suggestions on how to get it. I also didnt notice any form of pierce in the first linked POB. I'm trying to figure out how to get pierce here - Seems like my only reasonable option is to annoint Piercing Shots. I looked at getting +4 piercing on Greatwolf Talisman but I can't give up my Astramentis because I drop too much Dex. Other option could be to get a megalomaniac gem I guess but I need more levels (only lvl 92). You have any suggestions here? Thanks for the help!

POB: https://pobb.in/g4g6gO__ozqQ

FYI I dont have my Enlighten gems yet so just not running Determination until I get them. This allows me to not annoint Charisma because I can use all other auras without it - which is where I am thinking about going for Piercing Shots.

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JAGUARENSTEIN wrote:

What would be your next change now? And thank you again for the build and in-depth explanations:)

https://poe.ninja/pob/zKd

Your character is almost perfect. There is very little space to improve anything at this point but if you want to absolutely minmax:
- get Ivory Tower with 15% defences enchant
- corrupt boots, helment and shield for #% max Life implicit
- even better jewels

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Smallwalrus wrote:

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Xeverous wrote:

"

Smallwalrus wrote:

Do we need to get some sort of projectile's pierce mod?

Have you read respective post parts? Only for the default Ice Spear.

Hey, yes I did - but I didnt see any suggestions on how to get it. I also didnt notice any form of pierce in the first linked POB. I'm trying to figure out how to get pierce here - Seems like my only reasonable option is to annoint Piercing Shots. I looked at getting +4 piercing on Greatwolf Talisman but I can't give up my Astramentis because I drop too much Dex. Other option could be to get a megalomaniac gem I guess but I need more levels (only lvl 92). You have any suggestions here? Thanks for the help!

POB: https://pobb.in/g4g6gO__ozqQ

FYI I dont have my Enlighten gems yet so just not running Determination until I get them. This allows me to not annoint Charisma because I can use all other auras without it - which is where I am thinking about going for Piercing Shots.

- get better rings
- apply quality to your Astramentis
- annoint Piercing Shots or switch to Ice Spear of Splitting
- your Watcher's Eye is pretty bad - pure utility - can be replaced by the tree or Charms
- unallocate Ancestral Knowledge and allocate Utmost Intellect manually (this will free 1 annoint)
- don't use Divine Shield - it's bad - points are better spent on more life/ES
- get more Attack Speed and Awakened CoC (at 14% ICRS the cap changes from 6.06 casts/s to 7.57)

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JAGUARENSTEIN wrote:

What would be your next change now? And thank you again for the build and in-depth explanations:)

https://poe.ninja/pob/zKd

The biggest damage multipliers available to you are switching your ice spear of splitting to a normal ice spear and your kalandra's touch for a nimis. Beyond that crown of the inward eye to +1 proj glimpse of chaos with a good life roll, radiant faith FFF to sanctuary of thought and inspiration for awakened GMP. Your greatwolf is also a huge slot for upgrades, either a 32% attri and 24% life or if you're ridiculously rich a warlord simplex for str, %str and damage per 15 str. Additionally your tree and cluster are not especially optimized, this is a build that wants a 12/35 cluster with as much strength, int and life as you can get on it the notables can be nice utility but are significant DPS and raw hp losses. The other more minor boosts would be phys taken as ele corrupts on rathpith, life corrupts on your gloves and boots and a increased explicit defenses enchant on your ivory tower.

Edit: this is the link to my standard char who I ran last league with this build. My shaper's touch and coruscating are legacy gear providing fairly noticeable but not defining boosts everything else should be achievable in league. https://pobb.in/P8YkDaYc2Xp2

The dps is not accurate except against enemies who die to the initial burst of damage, dps against uber bosses is closer to ~300 million due to nimis return + sniper's mark split.

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Bainand wrote:

I have zero issues with dying to chaos damage since the searing purity converts 90% of it to non-chaos, and that is what lets me drop coruscating elixir. My chaos max hit is 35k with 900 unreserved mana which is almost double what it was when I was running coruscating when I had 20k (which is about average for others running coruscating). With two sources of mana leech to keep it topped up from chaos dots I have had 0 deaths from chaos since I swapped to searing purity at level 95, and am well on my way to level 98 doing fully juiced t16 cemeteries with very rare deaths.

I still have my pair of sanctuary of thought jewels sitting in my stash in case I wanted to switch back, but I have died less since I swapped. The insane movespeed from mageblood and hitting the 10.1 breakpoint combined with the ES on hit watchers eye helps a ton for survivability so I don't see myself going back to the sanctuary of thought jewels since I cleared so much slower with them.

Agreed that the determination isn't super useful, it is left over from when I was running a mageblood enhanced granite flask with increased armour at which point it was doing a lot more. I may try tempest shield instead. I have an almost perfect glimpse of chaos that I was normally using, but I temporarily swapped it out to solve resistances since I was swapping around some flasks since I dropped leech from my cluster and had to move it to a flask.

I have been trying multiple different spells out in fully juiced framerate-killer t16 cemetary maps with deli mirror and haven't found this version to be fragile at all, and haven't seen much need to add more defences.

I wanted to do CoC Ice Spear, but I also wanted to use Mageblood for the first time. I took your pob and made some adjustments to personalize it based on desires and budget. Thanks for the Searing Purity idea; depending on flask uptime when using Coruscating Elixir drove me mad. I couldn't stop to loot, I couldn't stop at all for any reason, and going down to the woods often meant I came out with no flask charges. I hated that time pressure with a passion!

Now, the small changes: I added a minion offense and defense wheel (+1 spectres, and minion chaos resist near Pain Attunement, although that wheel is likely overkill) for the new spectres. I'm currently only running 3 due to gem level limitations, but I swapped Zealotry from reserved aura to a minion and slapped in Purity of Elements for both the ailment immunity and resist overcap for myself, but also for my spectres. The other two are Determination and Wrath; their aura levels are far higher than ours, so I'm getting a decent chunk of extra dps for the passive investment. The fourth one is up in the air, but I'm considering one of the other Purities for shits and giggles (and maybe for Watcher's Eye) or the Vitality minion that also shares its three endurance charges.

I really want to use Nimis, but someone in this thread said it doesn't work with Splitting, but I don't know. How's Blazing Salvo treating you DPS- and clear-wise?

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Bulletti90 wrote:

I really want to use Nimis, but someone in this thread said it doesn't work with Splitting, but I don't know. How's Blazing Salvo treating you DPS- and clear-wise?

I'm not sure but there are 2 possible cases:

1) Nimis works with the splitting version but projectiles must exist to be able to return. So if the main projectile hits and splits, only splits which did not hit remain targets will remain and be able to return.

2) Nimis doesn't work with splited projectiles because they are classified as secondary (analogical to Tornado Shot)

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Bulletti90 wrote:

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Bainand wrote:

I have zero issues with dying to chaos damage since the searing purity converts 90% of it to non-chaos, and that is what lets me drop coruscating elixir. My chaos max hit is 35k with 900 unreserved mana which is almost double what it was when I was running coruscating when I had 20k (which is about average for others running coruscating). With two sources of mana leech to keep it topped up from chaos dots I have had 0 deaths from chaos since I swapped to searing purity at level 95, and am well on my way to level 98 doing fully juiced t16 cemeteries with very rare deaths.

I still have my pair of sanctuary of thought jewels sitting in my stash in case I wanted to switch back, but I have died less since I swapped. The insane movespeed from mageblood and hitting the 10.1 breakpoint combined with the ES on hit watchers eye helps a ton for survivability so I don't see myself going back to the sanctuary of thought jewels since I cleared so much slower with them.

Agreed that the determination isn't super useful, it is left over from when I was running a mageblood enhanced granite flask with increased armour at which point it was doing a lot more. I may try tempest shield instead. I have an almost perfect glimpse of chaos that I was normally using, but I temporarily swapped it out to solve resistances since I was swapping around some flasks since I dropped leech from my cluster and had to move it to a flask.

I have been trying multiple different spells out in fully juiced framerate-killer t16 cemetary maps with deli mirror and haven't found this version to be fragile at all, and haven't seen much need to add more defences.

I wanted to do CoC Ice Spear, but I also wanted to use Mageblood for the first time. I took your pob and made some adjustments to personalize it based on desires and budget. Thanks for the Searing Purity idea; depending on flask uptime when using Coruscating Elixir drove me mad. I couldn't stop to loot, I couldn't stop at all for any reason, and going down to the woods often meant I came out with no flask charges. I hated that time pressure with a passion!

Now, the small changes: I added a minion offense and defense wheel (+1 spectres, and minion chaos resist near Pain Attunement, although that wheel is likely overkill) for the new spectres. I'm currently only running 3 due to gem level limitations, but I swapped Zealotry from reserved aura to a minion and slapped in Purity of Elements for both the ailment immunity and resist overcap for myself, but also for my spectres. The other two are Determination and Wrath; their aura levels are far higher than ours, so I'm getting a decent chunk of extra dps for the passive investment. The fourth one is up in the air, but I'm considering one of the other Purities for shits and giggles (and maybe for Watcher's Eye) or the Vitality minion that also shares its three endurance charges.

I really want to use Nimis, but someone in this thread said it doesn't work with Splitting, but I don't know. How's Blazing Salvo treating you DPS- and clear-wise?

Glad to hear Searing Purity is working for you, it was a game changer for me, plus it gave me over 300 divs to play with since I have now sold my sanctuary of thought set since I don't see myself ever going back to coruscating elixir.

I did try the new spectres for a bit, but even with full gem links and some passive investment, they all died in super wisp juiced T16, and on ubers. I am currently running dark marionette with guardian's blessing to give me wrath, and body swap of sacrifice to kill one to "stagger" their health so I don't have to recast wrath.

I have played around with almost every spell, and here are my favorites:

Low budget (does not require pierce or greater multiple proj)

-Soulrend of the spiral. This one has 5 proj by default, and built in pierce. It also has a bit of a "homing missile" behavior and turns towards targets and so was my preference for low-density content like sanctum. It also has built in energy shield leech, so you can save some passives although I had it from flask anyways. Only issue is high base mana cost and low base crit.

- Arc of Oscillating. Good single target and clear. An extra bonus for this one is that it doesn't clutter the screen like most of the projectile skills, things just sort of fall over dead. Since there is a limit to the chains, this one falls off a bit in ultra juiced T16s, but is super effective for regular T16 mapping with minor juice.

- Lightning Conduit of the Heavens. This is my favorite non-projectile spell, and it has a good balance of clear and single target. A bit stronger than arc of oscillating for clear, but very similar.

- Crackling Lance of Branching. This performs better than arc of oscillating in high density, and worse in low density. Super smooth, and the increased arc angle means it hits almost in a full half-circle.

- Firestorm. The base firestorm and both trans gems perform very well, but I do not like the delay or the visual clutter. Fun to try for a dozen maps or so though.

Mid budget (requires proj scaling, nimis, or pierce to feel good)

- Ice Spear of Splitting. Very solid skill with very good clear once you get awakened GMP and nimis. Not sure where it came from that it does not work with nimis, it feels very good with nimis and honestly subpar without it. Has base pierce which gives it an edge over regular ice spear for mid-budget.

- Frostbolt. Suprisingly good clear and single target, although I wouldn't run this without awakened GMP and zimis. Has base pierce. One of my favorites, other than the lack of visual clarity due to screen clutter.

- Soulrend. Required more projectiles to scale since the base version only has one, but feels very good once you get 5+ projectles. Much lower mana cost than soulrend of the spiral.

- Blazing Salvo. Very good all around skill. Clear is not the best for high density since targets the enemies closest to you and explodes so it does not get fullscreen clear like soulrend and ice spear. I would have put this in low budget, but it does feel alot better with nimis in super juiced content.

High budget (requires proj scaling, nimis, or pierce to feel good)

- Soulrend of Reaping. Very good single target and clear, along with base energy shield leech but required awakened GMP, nimis, and pierce to feel good.

- Ice Spear. Better single target than soulrend of reaping, but feels like a bit less clear. Also requires awakened GMP, nimis, and pierce.

Honorable Mentions (these perform reasonably well, and have a fun factor that makes them worth playing around with for a bit

Fireball
Rolling Magma
Spark of the nova
Glacial Cascade

Ultimately, this build can run anything and that is part of the fun for me. If I get bored of one spell, I can swap in another one for a set of 40 maps or so.

Ice spear does not need awakened gmp to function although it is a big damage bonus, even just normal gmp is enough to do ubers with it if you have a nimis and pierces. The easiest way to get pierces for normal ice spear is to run stampede for a second anoint and anoint either your greatwolf or your stampede with piercing shots for two pierces and tranquility on the other one. A +1 proj glimpse of chaos is also amazing for this build in general but it hard locks you to running purity if you don't have mb + scaled resists on a flask and even then you may still want to run purity if possible. Crown frees up an anoint slot but is something like 10 to 15% less damage from the lost life and es and projectile. Ideally you would snag a +1 proj/+2 gems glimpse but two implicit glimpses are outrageously expensive.

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Bainand wrote:

High budget (requires proj scaling, nimis, or pierce to feel good)

- Soulrend of Reaping. Very good single target and clear, along with base energy shield leech but required awakened GMP, nimis, and pierce to feel good.

- Ice Spear. Better single target than soulrend of reaping, but feels like a bit less clear. Also requires awakened GMP, nimis, and pierce.

One issue I have is the colors on my Ivory Tower; I'm working on Vorici'ing it myself for at least 1W. I'm also looking at getting pierce from boots with the hunter mod, but a pair of decent boots is like 40 div and I kind of blew my budget on awakened CoC, Adorned and its jewels, and other stuff I don't even remember. Gotta build up some more wealth to grab a proper pair of boots and a helical ring (currently running Goldwyrn and some okayish 7 div Ventor I found myself) since I'm not even crit capped with this lack of str and int. I could get pierce from anointment, but replacing Utmost Intellect is like -20% DPS.